Golfer Plays 180 Holes, Pausing Only to Say It’s for a Good Cause

From sunrise until after sunset on Monday, Kevin McCandless was a golfer on a mission.

He played the game like it has rarely been played before--fast, breathless, often on the run--all in the name of charity.

Watching him was like viewing golf-lesson videos with a finger stuck on the fast-forward button.

But the frenzied pace was necessary for McCandless to complete 180 holes in about 12 hours at the Braemar Country Club.

The Keystone Kops probably played golf like this.

A golf tournament promoter and self-styled marathon golfer from Champaign, Ill., McCandless first came up with his charity brainstorm in August, when he raised $10,000 for Midwest flood victims, said Pamela Corante, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles chapter of the American Red Cross.

He hopes to raise at least that much through pledges in Los Angeles for victims of the recent firestorms, which charred more than 200,000 acres and damaged or destroyed 486 homes from Laguna Beach to Malibu, Altadena and Thousand Oaks.

All money raised will go to Red Cross fire disaster relief. Pledge figures were not immediately available, Corante said.

Despite playing about 18 holes an hour, McCandless showed no sign of tiring at midafternoon as he completed his fifth and sixth rounds on a gloomy autumn day.

After the sun set, he played the final 24 holes with glow-in-the-dark golf balls, winding up with a score of 974 over 180 holes--264 over par but eight shots fewer than his 180-hole score when he played for the flood victims.

During the day, McCandless sped from hole to hole in a golf cart sporting a bouquet of flowers from a woman friend. He cut ahead of other players--usually deemed an extreme violation of etiquette--and jogged from shot to shot, barely taking time to line up. He cheered himself on, shouting golf lingo such as “Lay down! Lay down!”

You must really, really like golf, he was told.

“I really, really like helping some people,” he said. “I don’t really get to play a lot. I’ve gotta cram it all into one day.”

McCandless was tailed by several careening cartloads of reporters. The scene called to mind an upscale version of those high-speed chases on the evening news, minus the helicopters.

The media-driven carts at times nearly crashed into one another as their drivers slammed on the brakes and peppered McCandless with questions.

Sometimes the questioning made him misplay a shot.

But he never cursed or complained.

That would take too much time.